NAS Drives

[xeny]

With 3 disks double parity gives you the ability to cope with any two disks failing, at the cost of 2/3 of the raw capacity

With 4 disks, RAID 6 gives the same space as RAID 10, worse write performance but comparable read performance.

The advantage of RAID 6 is that it survives _any_ two disks failing, while RAID 10 requires you to be "lucky" about where the second failure occurs to avoid data loss.

[dapprman]

Just to add - I mentioned 3/4 as I tend to forget about RAID 6 as by the time it came out SAN had moved forwards to a state where it dealt with the resilience and so I quickly added the 4th disk for RAID6

[Gad-Westy]

When I started this thread I'd asked about simple solutions but at the time I hadn't realised that NAS drives all seem be multi disk bays which brings in the question of RAID config, which drives to fill it with etc.

Is there nothing equivalent to a simple external hard disk that plugs into an ethernet port instead of USB? I must admit all the different options have got me pretty confused!

I have local backup already and cloud back up and a network drive would be another level of backup again so (rightly or wrongly) I'm just not bothered about RAID mirroring etc as well. My data is important but this isn't a business environment requiring instant resolution of problems.

Ideally I would have just liked a single disk unit off the shelf. Does such a drive exist?

[S6PNJ]

Gad-Westy said:

When I started this thread I'd asked about simple solutions but at the time I hadn't realised that NAS drives all seem be multi disk bays which brings in the question of RAID config, which drives to fill it with etc.

Is there nothing equivalent to a simple external hard disk that plugs into an ethernet port instead of USB? I must admit all the different options have got me pretty confused!

I have local backup already and cloud back up and a network drive would be another level of backup again so (rightly or wrongly) I'm just not bothered about RAID mirroring etc as well. My data is important but this isn't a business environment requiring instant resolution of problems.

Ideally I would have just liked a single disk unit off the shelf. Does such a drive exist?

Yup, Synology do 2 according to their website and I'm sure lots of the other well recommended manufacturers also do a single drive NAS - or simply buy a bare 2 bay NAS and put 1 disk in it.

https://www.synology.com/en-uk/products/DS118
https://www.synology.com/en-uk/products/DS120j

[xeny]

Gad-Westy said:

Ideally I would have just liked a single disk unit off the shelf. Does such a drive exist?

DS120J I mentioned in my original reply - also made the point that the 2 bay unit had usefully more CPU, so might be worth springing the extra for, even if you never use the bay.

[bitchstewie]

Gad-Westy said:

When I started this thread I'd asked about simple solutions but at the time I hadn't realised that NAS drives all seem be multi disk bays which brings in the question of RAID config, which drives to fill it with etc.

Is there nothing equivalent to a simple external hard disk that plugs into an ethernet port instead of USB? I must admit all the different options have got me pretty confused!

I have local backup already and cloud back up and a network drive would be another level of backup again so (rightly or wrongly) I'm just not bothered about RAID mirroring etc as well. My data is important but this isn't a business environment requiring instant resolution of problems.

Ideally I would have just liked a single disk unit off the shelf. Does such a drive exist?

As well as the single units above you could buy a multi-bay unit and just not use the bays until if/when you're ready too.

They come with drive caddies so you could buy a 2-bay unit if you thought you might ever want the functionality but only use a single bay initially.

[Gad-Westy]

Cheers again. I was just a little concerned with earlier talk of compatibility/reliablity of certain HDD's so was looking for a one box solution including drive. It does actually look like those exist too now that I've spent more time on it.

I think the key thing that I missed is that these NAS drive effectively a computer themselves so a level above a typical external drive hence why I seem to be looking at having to pay 2-3 times as much for a NAS drive.

There is an off the shelf synology 2x6tb model for about £500 that is maybe a decent option though I admit more than I was expecting to pay when this idea kicked off.

Just need to gen up how it's all partitioned etc for setting up time machines from different devices.

[bitchstewie]

You can definitely get much cheaper ones.

I haven't bought one for years but last time I looked it tended to be a bit of get what you pay for thing.

Synology aren't cheap but they are good and they tend to get updates for a long time etc.

I'm sure there are loads of £100 ones that may do exactly what you need.

[Gad-Westy]

bhstewie said:

You can definitely get much cheaper ones.

I haven't bought one for years but last time I looked it tended to be a bit of get what you pay for thing.

Synology aren't cheap but they are good and they tend to get updates for a long time etc.

I'm sure there are loads of £100 ones that may do exactly what you need.

I've seen Buffalo 3-4tb NAS all in ones for about £150 but they seem to get mixed reviews. Haven't seen any large capacity versions.

[Derek Smith]

bhstewie said:

Gad-Westy said:

When I started this thread I'd asked about simple solutions but at the time I hadn't realised that NAS drives all seem be multi disk bays which brings in the question of RAID config, which drives to fill it with etc.

Is there nothing equivalent to a simple external hard disk that plugs into an ethernet port instead of USB? I must admit all the different options have got me pretty confused!

I have local backup already and cloud back up and a network drive would be another level of backup again so (rightly or wrongly) I'm just not bothered about RAID mirroring etc as well. My data is important but this isn't a business environment requiring instant resolution of problems.

Ideally I would have just liked a single disk unit off the shelf. Does such a drive exist?

As well as the single units above you could buy a multi-bay unit and just not use the bays until if/when you're ready too.

They come with drive caddies so you could buy a 2-bay unit if you thought you might ever want the functionality but only use a single bay initially.

I've got three external HDDs in individual enclosures. As I've upgraded the HDDs in my desktop, I've migrated the old ones to enclosures, so ensuring they don't get too long in the tooth. I do a lot of video, images and now 3D, so need a bit of storage. I've got 8TB on externals.

I also have 1TB cloud storage with BT, where I keep essentials, stuff that doesn't get changed monthly, although I have a backup of these on an external as well.

I have a simple system. Every month (or five to six weeks more like) I save to HDD. I leave the copy of the previous month untouched and overwrite the copy of the files of the month before that. It's simpler than it sounds. It's getting a bit tight on space now.

In my desktop, I have a 500 gig SSD, a 6TB HDD and a 3TB HDD. Oddly enough, I can fit two lots onto the 8TB discs without too much trouble, although there's only one copy of the 'essentials' on HDD.

I upload overnight, spread over a couple of days.

You may have guessed, but I've had two HDD failures, one losing me some images that were irreplaceable. The second time I had backups, and I was up and running as normal withing hours.

It's evidently excellent protection against viruses, according to a recent Computer Active, as one backup HDD might go ten or twelve weeks without being switched on. I feel vindicated.

The discs are in a corner of the desk behind on of the screens, taking up otherwise unusable space.

I also clone my SSD to another at about the same frequency or when I add a programme. I also have a clone of a clean install of Win10. I'm not sure why, given how easy it is now to reinstall the OS, but its on a 250GB SSD that I have no use for.

It sounds time consuming, but isn't. What it is, is reassuring.

[S6PNJ]

Synology unit
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Synology-DS120j-Bay-Deskt...

4Tb Drive for it
https://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-Inch-Internal-Hard-Dri...

Cost (give or take a few pennies) £200 Or pick a drive the size you want

[eein]

A note on syncing to cloud copies - I originally chose QNAP for my NAS because (at that time... 5 years ago) they were the only one that had a feature to auto-sync to the cloud across multiple cloud accounts. I dont know, but would be quite confident that other NASes do the same now. I mostly sync to multiple OneDrive accounts, but also have some syncing to the free portion of Google and Amazon.

Similary on the choice of cloud provider I ended up with Microsoft OneDrive because you got 5TB (now 6TB) of storage (as well as Office). I've not looked recently to see if other (reputable) providers ofer multi TB for the ~$10pm range of cost.

Although it's a bit of a faff to set up, once it's done it just runs and day to day I just have a network drive on my PC that I use normally and forget about everything else.

[Craikeybaby]

Bumping this as I am currently in the market for a NAS, probably one of the low end Synology/QNAP ones...

I currently have a 2TB drive connected to my iMac, it is partitioned so that 1TB is a TimeMachine and 1TB is archive storage. My iMac is about to be replaced by a MacBook, so I would like something on the network to act as my TimeMachine and archive storage. My storage requirements have also increased, so I will be looking at 4TB (or maybe 6TB).

This has led me to look at NAS devices, however, I still have a few questions:

• I am not looking to write the same data to 2 drives, this will be one element in a backup solution covering local, remote, and cloud. Is NAS overkill?
• Am I best starting off with 1 big drive, or 2 smaller drives?
• Can I run 2 smaller drives as separate volumes, or am I best off using RAID to make 1 volume, then split in in the NAS configuration tools?
• I keep a further set of data on AWS S3/Glacier, do either brand play better with AWS?
• I have a regular CAT5e (I think) network, so just 100Mbit, going through a standard broadband router, is this going to be fast enough for TimeMachine backups?
• Any specific model recommendations?

All media content is streamed, so not looking to run any servers/transcode etc, just do TimeMachine backups and store photo archives.

[Magnum 475]

Craikeybaby said:

Bumping this as I am currently in the market for a NAS, probably one of the low end Synology/QNAP ones...

I currently have a 2TB drive connected to my iMac, it is partitioned so that 1TB is a TimeMachine and 1TB is archive storage. My iMac is about to be replaced by a MacBook, so I would like something on the network to act as my TimeMachine and archive storage. My storage requirements have also increased, so I will be looking at 4TB (or maybe 6TB).

This has led me to look at NAS devices, however, I still have a few questions:

• I am not looking to write the same data to 2 drives, this will be one element in a backup solution covering local, remote, and cloud. Is NAS overkill?
• Am I best starting off with 1 big drive, or 2 smaller drives?
• Can I run 2 smaller drives as separate volumes, or am I best off using RAID to make 1 volume, then split in in the NAS configuration tools?
• I keep a further set of data on AWS S3/Glacier, do either brand play better with AWS?
• I have a regular CAT5e (I think) network, so just 100Mbit, going through a standard broadband router, is this going to be fast enough for TimeMachine backups?
• Any specific model recommendations?

All media content is streamed, so not looking to run any servers/transcode etc, just do TimeMachine backups and store photo archives.

Can't comment on QNAP, but I can tell you that Synology works great as a TimeMachine target. We're backing up 3 Macs to a single Synology TimeMachine unit - it works just fine, and restores with no issues.

[Griffith4ever]

Another vote for Synology. Got a DS220+ and it is superb - performance, apps, and interface. Light years ahead of my previous Netgear ReadyNas Duo

[xeny]

Craikeybaby said:

This has led me to look at NAS devices, however, I still have a few questions:

• I am not looking to write the same data to 2 drives, this will be one element in a backup solution covering local, remote, and cloud. Is NAS overkill?
• Am I best starting off with 1 big drive, or 2 smaller drives?
• Can I run 2 smaller drives as separate volumes, or am I best off using RAID to make 1 volume, then split in in the NAS configuration tools?
• I keep a further set of data on AWS S3/Glacier, do either brand play better with AWS?
• I have a regular CAT5e (I think) network, so just 100Mbit, going through a standard broadband router, is this going to be fast enough for TimeMachine backups?
• Any specific model recommendations?

.

Depends how much you value what you're backing up, and potentially speed of recovery.

Get one drive - unless you anticipate doing backups at the same time as photo uploads to the device, in which case you may see a performance benefit from splitting the workload across 2 drives, so each can do one thing at a time. How much you want to chase performance depends lots on data sizes.

Certainly on a Synology, you can run 2 drives as separate volumes. Don't muck around with RAID 0 to combine 2 drives' worth of space, as one drive failing will lose the lot.

Are you sure the wired network isn't 1000Mbit i.e. Gigabit? Bottleneck is likely to be wifi speed unless the laptop will be on a wired network connection. If it will be fast enough will depend on how much data you generate/change, but within reason I@d expect it to be fine, especially if you're managing to back up to S3 across domestic broadband upload.

On the Synology side, I've done all need and more with a 211J, so I'd suggest a 220J - I think it's worth paying the extra for the flexibility of 2 drive bays even if you don't use one of them immediately.

[mikef]

I bought a DS216+ off the Bay for around a £100, you could just keep looking for the better Synology 2-drive models, they come up

Also, there are usually a fair number of WD Red Pro (7200rpm) 6TB used disks for sale cheap on the Bay, with condition reports, as data centres are upgrading to the latest mahoosive-capacity drives; you could use two of those in a RAID 1 mirror. And yes, Time Machine works well on Synology NAS.

I'm not sure I followed all the details of your home network, but just to be aware, the latest Synology DSM 7 operating system has dropped support for USB wifi dongles on the NAS unit, so you will need to hard wire to your router or use a bridge

[Craikeybaby]

Magnum 475 said:

Can't comment on QNAP, but I can tell you that Synology works great as a TimeMachine target. We're backing up 3 Macs to a single Synology TimeMachine unit - it works just fine, and restores with no issues.

Thanks, that is good to hear.

Griffith4ever said:

Another vote for Synology. Got a DS220+ and it is superb - performance, apps, and interface. Light years ahead of my previous Netgear ReadyNas Duo

I am leaning more towards Synology, as they seem to have better software, even if they are more expensive when you look at like fit like hardware.

xeny said:

Depends how much you value what you're backing up, and potentially speed of recovery.

Get one drive - unless you anticipate doing backups at the same time as photo uploads to the device, in which case you may see a performance benefit from splitting the workload across 2 drives, so each can do one thing at a time. How much you want to chase performance depends lots on data sizes.

Certainly on a Synology, you can run 2 drives as separate volumes. Don't muck around with RAID 0 to combine 2 drives' worth of space, as one drive failing will lose the lot.

Are you sure the wired network isn't 1000Mbit i.e. Gigabit? Bottleneck is likely to be wifi speed unless the laptop will be on a wired network connection. If it will be fast enough will depend on how much data you generate/change, but within reason I@d expect it to be fine, especially if you're managing to back up to S3 across domestic broadband upload.

On the Synology side, I've done all need and more with a 211J, so I'd suggest a 220J - I think it's worth paying the extra for the flexibility of 2 drive bays even if you don't use one of them immediately.

Thanks for the detailed response, I was torn between 1 big disk or 2 smaller disks running separately, I expect it may come down to cost. I guess the trade off with 2 disks is that it would be harder to upgrade in future.

I’m not sure on the network in my house, I think it is CAT5. So it could be gigabit. It is just connected to the ISP router. Laptop will be on the Ethernet at my desk, but not all of the time. The 220J was my starting point, but the equivalent QNAP looks much better specced, so trying to workout/justify if the 218 would be a better bet.

mikef said:

I bought a DS216+ off the Bay for around a £100, you could just keep looking for the better Synology 2-drive models, they come up

Also, there are usually a fair number of WD Red Pro (7200rpm) 6TB used disks for sale cheap on the Bay, with condition reports, as data centres are upgrading to the latest mahoosive-capacity drives; you could use two of those in a RAID 1 mirror. And yes, Time Machine works well on Synology NAS.

I'm not sure I followed all the details of your home network, but just to be aware, the latest Synology DSM 7 operating system has dropped support for USB wifi dongles on the NAS unit, so you will need to hard wire to your router or use a bridge

Thanks, I had not considered an older, but higher spec model. Do they still get OS updates? I’ll look into the drives too.

Whatever NAS I get will be wired into the standard ISP router at home, I had Ethernet cables run to most rooms when the houses rewired 10 years ago.

[mikef]

Craikeybaby said:

I had not considered an older, but higher spec model. Do they still get OS updates?

Yes, Synology are very good on that front

[xeny]

Craikeybaby said:

The 220J was my starting point, but the equivalent QNAP looks much better specced, so trying to workout/justify if the 218 would be a better bet.

I still use my 211J for photo storage - the web interface for management is getting a bit sluggish but as a light use file server it's good enough and I've got a 420J now for bulk storage of video etc. Compared to the 211, either a 220J or 218 will be a rocket ship.

All things being equal you'll get more support years out of a newer device - my 211j is just coming to end of support.

I think Synology make a little more profit on hardware, but plough it back into better software dev than Qnap.